'The Hobbit' at 48fps: Frame Rates Explained
pcmag.com
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There is however a cultural issue that is worst amongst the film creators that "film" is regarded as expensive, high-end and good so that things that don't have the artefacts (low frame rate, film grain and colour) are regarded with at least suspicion. This will probably pass with time especially as the number of high budget, high quality TV series increases.
So, yes, increased framerates do make things like aliasing concerns -- long the bane of many an action movie director's existence -- go away. However, there is a concrete and visceral difference between 24fps and 30/48 that is impossible to ignore (unlike, say vinyl vs. digital, which requires an expert and a dollop of wishful thinking to recognize). This is not something that only the snooty directors and film buffs will notice -- everyone (and I mean everyone) in the theater will comment on it.
Now, perhaps we all as species just need to adjust to the new normal. We'll see. Personally, I find that 24fps adds a sense of larger-than-lifeness that I find really attractive. Maybe I'll just get over it, but I suspect that I'll miss 24fps for quite a while.
Nice strawman. Do you have any actual arguments?
Which is a more powerful statement? This: http://virgo.bibl.u-szeged.hu/wm/paint/auth/monet/parliament...
or this: http://isitthattime.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/fog-over-the...
There's no question that the latter is more technically accurate, more lifelike, more realistic, but it lacks the guttural punch of the Monet. Monet was a master, but only by exploiting the limitations of his medium could he attain that mastery.
So it goes with film. A decent cinematographer uses the inherent faults of film to convey emotion. Without the low dynamic range of film, the dark corners of the Nostromo in Alien would have looked like a plywood movie set. Without lens flare and blown highlights then the plight of a dehydrated hero in the desert would be much harder to get across. Those things - 24fps, lens flare, low range, depth of field - have become part of our shared culture now. So much so that even media which aim for perfect realism (eg video games) mimic some of them to aid immersion and, once again, heighten the emotional response.
You point is well taken, but just as a minor nit, I wanted to add that artists did achieve photorealism first and then move on to abstractness. Arguably, that was driven by the advent of photography which commoditized photorealism.
But still, painting is painting. Take the Dutch Old Masters: incredibly realistic, lifelike pictures, but also extraordinarily powerful. One doesn't preclude the other, but in every case something about the medium contributes to its power. It might be the fact that a sitter for one of Caravaggio's Christs was actually suffering due to holding his body in place for so long; it could be a need to invent some aspect of light in a scene which ends up illuminating a girl's face in a particularly lovely way.
There's plenty of emotion in photography, too, but it tends to come as a result of skilful use of that medium's own characteristics: spontaneity, completeness, and presence. Press photographs are a great example, exploiting the medium's immediacy to steal a few, shocking milliseconds of reality. That applies even to powerful landscape photographs, in the opposite way: They are very carefully staged, manipulated and contrived, all simply a way to align the limitations of the medium (only 1/500th of a second to make an image) with a particularly beautiful instant of passing space-time.
If 24fps is somehow good for certain types of film, then by all means, keep using it. But it's silly to say that 24fps is universally better, as I've heard some people say.
The first one made me think of cartoon depictions of the evil lair and children's drawings. It also looked like those ink blob psychological tests were you can see anything you want in the picture. (Which is presumably why you like it better.)
To me some arguments for film hold up, but are rapidly becoming less relevant as digital sensors improve. The biggest case form film to me is the dynamic range (in film terms "latitude") compared to digital. Film is currently still better at retaining detail in high contrast shots (for example a person dimly lit against a bright sky). And when film does "blow out" it has a tendency to be a smooth curve and even the over-exposed parts of the frame that may be fully white still have some texture. Whereas digital has a harsh drop off where the information is just gone and it has a rather ugly look.
Newer camera sensors are starting to get very, very close to film in terms of latitude. But for the moment even the most expensive Hollywood level cameras are not quite as good. I expect this to change and eventually film won't have this advantage anymore.
Film does tend to have a pleasing, organic look. But plugins are getting very good at emulating the good parts of that without all of the hassles of film. I liken it to audio recording, which went through a similar analog-vs-digital revolution in the 90's. there are still people that choose analog for artistic reasons, but digital is accepted as the primary recording medium now.
As for 48fps, though, that's irrelevant in the digital-vs-film argument because both types of cameras can shoot at either frame rate.
Film has a charm to itself though (even just watching rushes projectioned vs monitor), but from a practical standpoint it's dead and gone. When you factor in a cost of stock only for a 90 minute film (with a, standard, coverage of 20:1 or 30:!) you have to pay for it as much as a new digital camera. Not to mention developing, scanning, handling, storing it...
I think it's a pretty exciting time actually in camera technology. I think film will still be an artistic choice for a while. Directors like Spielberg and Tarantino have claimed they will never stop shooting on film. But, I heard that same kind of stuff about audio back in the 90s, so we'll see!
I'm also one of those guys waiting on my pre-order of a black magic cinema camera which claims 13 stops, so I'm pretty excited to get my hands on it!
I only have problems with weird arguments where people prefer stuff that's obviously worse, like the aforementioned grain and low frame rates.
Of course the correlation between certain types of noise/distortion and the resulting interpretation is in many cases culturally determined, and that changes over time... One minute shakycam is considered the height of immersion, the next, it's an embarrassing affectation.
But still, there's nothing inherently wrong with preferring something "worse," especially when the latter judgment is made on a narrow technical basis which misses the larger picture.
I love digital, I love film. I'd like directors to have a choice, but I suspect we'll see studios effectively enforcing digital for all but the most influential directors going forward.
But the debate between vinyl and cds is completely separate from the debate on loudness.
Normalising within 16 bits has led to loudness wars. That's the medium. Analogue chains all overflow towards a chaotic end. Some people prefer that chain of events.
Overeager compression (specifically, limiting) is a whole different problem, especially with modern pop production.
vinyl vs CD, tube vs solid-state/digital -- those are more similar to film's 24fps vs higher frame rates: straightforward arguments against higher-fidelity technologies because we've grown emotionally attached to the particular artifacts of legacy technologies.
High framerates are great for live events and reality-based programming. 24-30fps is suited to taking the viewer "out of reality" into an artistically constructed world. This is not going to change because some movie theaters get 48fps projectors.
But there's something else going on with the Hobbit. I watched the trailer, which is definitely not 48 fps, and more than once I got the feeling of watching an actor-on-a-stage-on-video. This might be more related to the use of RED cameras than the framerate.
Using my film degree about once a year here on HN!
Just because you're tied to one interpretation of the art style doesn't mean all artists are.
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If it were the case that they have some local brand (as is the case when you can't buy music/games/etc online), it would probably redirect somewhere else as Google.
For some reason I found myself at an IATSE event. IATSE is a union for motion picture professionals. At the end, they projected a scene, once in 24fps, the second time in 48fps.
48fps looked "real" to my eyes, insomuch as it looked how I imagine it would've looked to have been in the room.
Unfortunately, that's not the look I like in films and movies. It truly looked like a soap opera.
There's a chance that 30 minutes into the Hobbit, peoples eyes will acclimate, and you'll forget, but I think those initial scenes are going to be a bit of a disappointment.
He felt like he was looking at a play of the Hobbit--watching costumed people walk around a set. He couldn't get it to shift into that "watching a movie" place in his mind.
But you're right--it might be that 10 minutes is just not long enough to adjust. I'm skeptical but I do want to try it.
...48FPS would nail it right on the head.
I've found that computer animated films often translate better to 3D since, obviously, it doesn't require any fancy cameras.
IMO the purists complaining about 48Hz are complaining about a subconscious association, perhaps a bit like the smell of popcorn in the lobby. It's not an objective complaint, but as a subjective one it may be shared by a large proportion of the audience. Hard to tell until someone takes the risk with a broad audience, like Jackson is doing here.
The main visual difference was when rapidly moving the mouse; turning quickly was much more visually appealing at a high frame rate.
*(only "3D-capable" LCDs run at 120 Hz or 240 Hz and are therefore capable of actually showing more than 60 frames per second).
Well, obviously old fixtures still exist, but if you have one in your office it's time to get rid of it. The new ones are much more energy efficient, but more importantly they are more pleasing to the eye.
(Specifically get a T8 fixture, not a T12.)
It doesn't help the case that the last time this subject came up with a big tentpole release it was Dinosaurs Fighting Helicopters.
Particularly in artistic media, where emotion and tone are regularly conveyed through distortions.
48/60p may be great for some projects. Their technical advantages may enable shots that simply can't be done well at 24fps. But even that does not make them inherently "better". Merely the right tool for a given job.
As there's no technological requirement for us to use either one format or the other, I see absolutely no reason we can't go forward allowing people to choose technology on an as-appropriate basis without slandering particular choices as illegitimate in all cases.
My experience with 48fps is exactly the same as my experience with those 120Hz televisions -- any significant motion looks like it's been artificially sped up. Anyone know why this is?
But I can't read the article. It redirects to google.
Apart from that, we've been stuck at 24fps for a long time. It's very noticeable on any film that has any action in: jarring, blurred, choppy sequences.
Not all TV's have scan lines. Any that are 1080p do not interlace.
A piece of film is illuminated and shown fully on the screen. There is no scan line.
A TV is drawn one line at a time. There is a scan line.
Interlaced vs Non-Interlaced has nothing to do with what I am talking about as both draw one line at a time. Interlaced just means it draws half the first tick and half the second tick. Non-interlaced draws the full frame each tick. Both draw a line at a time.
Your HD flatscreen (plasma or LCD) does not draw one line at a time. HD is decoded into a framebuffer and that framebuffer is drawn on the screen in some hardware specific way. It may be rectangles, or the whole screen, or different vertical/horizontal slices (with very high refresh rates so you don't see flicker).
Edit: Moveover, "film" is almost always digital nowadays (I don't think I've seen a non-digital projection in the last 5 years) which means that the picture gets to the screen via some form of LCD projection. So your home TV and film are basically the same at this point. You would've been right 10 years ago, though.
You can prove it by using a camera with a fast shutter and trying various shutter speeds. If you have a leaf shutter in your camera you'll have to hold the camera in all 4 direction to test it properly - you don't want the projector shutter and the camera shutter to interact weirdly.
Pfooui. Can't believe we're even having this discussion. You'll take your higher resolution and higher frame rates and in five years you'll have carefully edited your memory so that you knew all along that it was a great idea and you sure were telling everybody about how awesome it was going to be against all the naysayers.
With a high FPS (in movies), each frame is less blurry, everything becomes sharper hence the 'uncanny' feeling.
And you can't compare video games and motion pictures - there's no blurring in video games at all. (Take a screenshot in them, compare and you'll see why)
Most video games since a few years ago render frames with a degree of artificial motion blur to simulate speed. This is particularly the case with racing games but also exists in first-person shooters (moreso on the PC than on consoles, since rapid mouse movements translate to rapid screen motion).
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